Architecture and Public Policy

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CIS explores how changes in the architecture of computer networks affect the economic environment for innovation and competition on the Internet, and how the law should react to those changes. This work has lead us to analyze the issue of network neutrality, perhaps the Internet's most debated policy issue, which concerns Internet user's ability to access the content and software of their choice without interference from network providers.

Professor of Law and Helen L. Crocker Faculty Scholar at Stanford Law School, Director of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, and Professor (by courtesy) of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University

Barbara van Schewick is a Professor of Law and Helen L. Crocker Faculty Scholar at Stanford Law School, Director of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, Professor (by courtesy) of Electrical Engineering in Stanford University’s Department of Electrical Engineering, and a leading expert on net neutrality.

Paddy Leerssen was the Open Internet Fellow at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society in 2017-2018. AT CIS, he worked on digital media and communications law in general, and net neutrality policy in particular. He is now a PhD Candidate at the University of Amsterdam, where his dissertation focuses on the impacts of algorithmic content recommendations on the governance of media pluralism. Paddy holds an LL.M. from Harvard Law School, where he studied as a Fulbright Scholar, an LL.M. from the University of Amsterdam, and an LL.B. from Maastricht University.

Marvin Ammori is a leading First Amendment lawyer and Internet policy expert. He was instrumental to the adoption of network neutrality rules in the US and abroad–having been perhaps the nation’s leading legal advocate advancing network neutrality–and also instrumental to the defeat of the SOPA and PIPA copyright/censorship bills.

Emily Baxter is a research associate for Women's Economic Policy at the Center for American Progress, focusing on women's and families' economic security, women's leadership, and work-family balance. She previously worked as the special assistant for the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative at the Center. In the fall of 2012, Emily was a field organizer for President Obama’s re-election campaign near her hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania.

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The Rise of Participation Culture reports and summarizes a number of trends and explains "why the Internet and a new wave of Web applications have been embraced by a tech-savvy generation and spawned a culture of participation". Steve Borsch does a thoughtful job of reviewing (albeit at a high level) a number of aspects of the new web (or Web 2.0, the LiveWeb, NextGenWeb, or whatever else we want to call it) in three broad categories: Internet as Platform, Participation Applications and People. (Also available from Borsch's blog, Connecting the Dots.) This report hits all the highlights and is worth a read if you're looking for the big picture... you know, that proverbial forest through the trees.

This is too funny. I had to share it here. Check out Chris Pirillo's comparison of YouTube vs. GoogleVideo vs. Revver. When I do the comparison from my DSL w/ a macbook, it seems like the YouTube and Revver sites load and run fine. The Google Video one (in the middle), however, keeps buffering and stalling... In any event, take a minute and enjoy this.

Abstract

Though scholars have identified the expanding scope of First Amendment speech doctrine, little attention has been paid to the theoretical transformation happening inside the doctrine that has accompanied its outward creep. Taking up this overlooked perspective, this Article uncovers a new speech theory: the libertarian tradition. This new tradition both is generative of the doctrine’s expansion and risks undermining the First Amendment’s theoretical foundations.

Thank you for inviting me to testify today. My name is Barbara van Schewick. I’m a Professor at Stanford Law School and the Director of the Center for Internet and Society there; I also have a courtesy appointment at Stanford’s Electrical Engineering Department. I have a PhD in computer science and a law degree. I’m here as an independent academic whose research for the past 16 years has focused on the relationship between Internet architecture, innovation and regulation. The FCC’s 2010 and 2015 Open Internet Rules relied heavily on my work. My work also informed TRAI’s 2016 Order on zero-rating and the European Union’s recently adopted guidelines implementing the European Union’s net neutrality law.

In November 2015, T-Mobile, the third largest provider of mobile Internet access in the U.S., launched a new service called Binge On that offers “unlimited” video streaming from selected providers. Customers on qualifying plans can stream video from forty-two providers in Binge On – Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, HBO, and others – without using their data plans, a practice known as zero-rating. As currently offered, Binge On violates key net neutrality principles and harms user choice, innovation, competition, and free speech online. As a result, the program is likely to violate the FCC’s general conduct rule.

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Comcast Corp. v. FCC is a 2010 United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia case holding that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) does not have ancillary jurisdiction over Comcast’s Internet service under the language of the Communications Act of 1934. In so holding, the Court vacated a 2008 order issued by the FCC that asserted jurisdiction over Comcast’s network management polices and censured Comcast from interfering with its subscribers' use of peer-to-peer software.

In 2005, on the same day the FCC re-classified DSL service and effectively reduced the regulatory obligations of DSL providers, the FCC announced its unanimous view that consumers are entitled to certain rights and expectations with respect to their broadband service, including the right to:

"Oral arguments before the three-judge panel were heard early this year, and a decision is expected in late spring or early summer. "The court could reinstate the 2015 protections in full, uphold the FCC's repeal, or rule more narrowly on parts of the repeal," says Ryan Singel, a fellow at Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society. "Additionally, the court may decide whether the FCC decision would pre-empt any state laws on net neutrality.""

"But Ryan Singel, a media and strategy fellow at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society, characterized the repeal of net neutrality protections as a far more extreme measure.

“For the first time ever the FCC said we do not have jurisdiction to step in and police ISPs from what happens on the internet,” Singel told Law360 Tuesday. “I would say the 2017 order does not get us anywhere close to where we were before 2015.”"

"Ryan Singel, a media and strategy fellow at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society and founder at Contextly, told me in an email interview that, “AT&T continues its policy of zero-rating its own video services, while not zero-rating competing services. With its acquisition of Time-Warner, it has even more reason to continue this unfair practice.”"

"“5G is an evolution, not a revolution,” Thomas Lohninger told TNW. Lohninger is the Executive Director of the digital rights NGO epicenter.works, which recently published a report on net neutrality in the EU (PDF).

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In 2017, the FCC voted to abolish net neutrality protections, which ensure that we, not the companies we pay to get online, get to choose what we do online. This event will explore what we lost, why it matters, and what’s happening with efforts to restore those protections in the courts, the states and Washington, D.C.

Join the FCBA's Northern California Chapter for an engaging discussion with key government, academic, and industry speakers to discuss the past, present, and future of net neutrality policy in California.